718 entries categorized "Surveillance / Privacy"

May 17, 2016

The New York Times reports Chinese authorities are quietly scrutinizing technology products sold in China by Apple and other big foreign companies, focusing on whether they pose potential security threats to the country and its consumers and opening up a new front in an already tense relationship with Washington over digital security. Apple and other companies in recent months have been subjected to reviews that target encryption and the data storage of tech products, said people briefed on the reviews who spoke on the condition of anonymity. In the reviews, Chinese officials require executives or employees of the foreign tech companies to answer questions about the products in person, according to these people.

May 03, 2016

Politco reports a federal judge delivered a blow Monday to Twitter's drive to release more details on surveillance orders it receives, but the tech firm won a chance to try to reformulate its case. U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Rogers said the government has the power to prohibit the release of classified information, barring claims Twitter made in a lawsuit filed two years ago challenging as unconstitutional the limits federal officials have placed on publication of some statistics about surveillance demands. "The First Amendment does not permit a person subject to secrecy obligations to disclose classified national security information," Rogers wrote, citing a 1980 Supreme Court case about a former CIA analyst publishing the names of CIA personnel overseas.

April 28, 2016

Wired reports in February 2014, the US ambassador to Ukraine suffered an embarrassing leak. A secret conversation between him and US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland got posted to YouTube, in which Nuland spoke disparagingly about the European Union. The conversation occurred over unencrypted phones, and US officials told reporters they suspected the call was intercepted in Ukraine, but didn’t say how. Some people believe it occurred using vulnerabilities in a mobile data network known as SS7, which is part of the backbone infrastructure that telecoms around the world use to communicate between themselves about how to route calls and text messages.

April 20, 2016

The Washington Post reports a public advocate appointed by the nation’s secretive surveillance court last year argued that a little-known provision of the PRISM program, which enables the FBI to query foreign intelligence information for evidence of domestic crime, violated the Constitution. But the court disagreed with her. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court asked Amy Jeffress, the advocate, in August to assess the provision, according to a court opinion filed in November but released by the intelligence community only on Tuesday

April 14, 2016

The Washington Post reports Microsoft wants a federal judge in Seattle to strike down a law that allows courts to prohibit a tech company from telling customers that the government has sought their data. In a civil suit filed Thursday against the Justice Department, the tech giant revealed that in the past 18 months alone federal courts have issued almost 2,600 orders preventing Microsoft from alerting customers their data has been obtained in criminal probes. Notably, more than two-thirds — some 1,750 orders — had no fixed end date.v

April 13, 2016

The Washington Post reports the FBI cracked a San Bernardino terrorist’s phone with the help of professional hackers who discovered and brought to the bureau at least one previously unknown software flaw, according to people familiar with the matter. The new information was then used to create a piece of hardware that helped the FBI to crack the iPhone’s four-digit personal identification number without triggering a security feature that would have erased all the data, the individuals said. The researchers, who typically keep a low profile, specialize in hunting for vulnerabilities in software and then in some cases selling them to the U.S. government.

March 22, 2016

Wired reports just as the FBI’s standoff with Apple seemed to be coming to a head, the government has abruptly changed course. And it may be backing down altogether from the most public battle in the growing war between law enforcement and tech firms over encryption. On Monday afternoon, the Justice Department filed a motion for a continuance on a hearing set to happen tomorrow in Riverside, California, where it would have argued its case that Apple must help it to crack the iPhone 5C of dead San Bernardino killer Syed Rizwan Farook. The FBI hasn’t given up on accessing the data in Farook’s phone. But it now says it may not need Apple’s assistance to crack the device after all, which it had previously told a judge it could legally compel using the 1789 law known as the All Writs Act.

March 17, 2016

Wired reportsApple’s latest brief in its battle with the FBI over the San Bernardino iPhone offered the tech company an opportunity to school the Feds over their misinterpretation and misquotations of a number of statutes and legal cases they cited as precedent in their own brief last week. Many viewed Apple’s arguments as a withering commentary on the government’s poor legal acumen. According to Apple, many of the cases the government uses to support its argument that the All Writs Act can be used to compel Apple to help crack the phone don’t actually have anything to do with the All Writs Act, or encryption, or anything of relevance to the current case.

March 14, 2016

Wired reports if there’s anything the world has learned from the standoff over the encrypted iPhone of San Bernardino killer Syed Rizwan Farook, it’s that the FBI doesn’t take no for an answer. And now it’s becoming clear that the government’s determination to access encrypted data doesn’t end with a single iPhone, or with Apple, or even with data stored on devices. It may extend as far as any app that encrypts secrets in transit or in the cloud. Messaging service WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook and has encrypted messages between its Android users for the past two years, is the next tech firm to be drawn into the widening battle between U.S. law enforcement and Silicon Valley over encryption.

March 02, 2016

The Washington Post reports a senior Facebook executive was detained in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Tuesday after the company’s WhatsApp cellphone chat subsidiary told federal authorities it was unable to intercept instant messages in connection with a drug investigation. Diego Dzodan, Facebook’s vice president for Latin America, was taken into custody on his way into work following a judicial order from a judge, said WhatsApp spokesman Matt Steinfeld. The case reflects the growing conflict between technology firms and governments around the world over access to customer data. As more companies use strong encryption on their customers’ devices and communication, the information becomes increasingly out of reach for law enforcement, even if officials have obtained warrants.

March 01, 2016

The Associated Press reports the high-stakes legal fight between Apple Inc. and the Justice Department over a locked iPhone is moving from the courts to Congress. FBI Director James Comey and Apple chief lawyer Bruce Sewell are appearing before the House Judiciary Committee for a hearing on encryption Tuesday afternoon. The hearing comes amid two significant and conflicting court rulings in New York and California on whether Apple can be forced to help the FBI gain access to locked phones. Comey warns in his prepared testimony that technological advancements have been accompanied by "new dangers."

February 23, 2016

Reuters reports Italy's foreign ministry on Tuesday summoned the U.S. ambassador after media reports that American intelligence services tapped the telephones of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his aides in 2011. Newspaper La Repubblica reported the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) spied on the billionaire, four-time prime minister five years ago when his government was under pressure at the height of the euro zone debt crisis. Ambassador John Phillips was due to go to the foreign ministry in the afternoon, a ministry official said. La Repubblica said whistleblowing site Wikileaks revealed the 79-year-old media tycoon and head of Italy's main centre-right party had been in the NSA's crosshairs between 2008 and 2011.

The New York Times reports the Department of Homeland Security, at the urging of Congress, is building tools to more aggressively examine the social media accounts of all visa applicants and those seeking asylum or refugee status in the United States for possible ties to terrorist organizations. Posts on Twitter, Facebook and other social media can reveal a wealth of information that can be used to identify potential terrorists, but experts say the department faces an array of technical, logistical and language barriers in trying to analyze the millions of records generated every day.

February 17, 2016

The Associated Press reports Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook says his company will fight a federal magistrate's order to help the FBI hack into an encrypted iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino, California shooters. The company said that could potentially undermine encryption for millions of other users. Cook's response, posted early Wednesday on the company's website, set the stage for a legal fight between the federal government and Silicon Valley with broad implications for digital privacy and national security. U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym had ordered Apple to help the FBI break into an iPhone belonging to Syed Farook, one of the shooters in the Dec. 2 attack that killed 14 people. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, died in a gun battle with police.

February 11, 2016

The New York Times reports in its continuing give-and-take with European privacy regulators, Google is about to make another change to how people view the company’s search results in Europe. The American technology giant will soon block access to certain disputed links from all of its domains — including the main United States one, Google.com — when people in Europe use its online search engine, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Those people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

February 02, 2016

The Washington Post reports the National Security Agency, the largest electronic spy agency in the world, is undertaking a major reorganization, merging its offensive and defensive organizations in the hope of making them more adept at facing the digital threats of the 21st century, according to current and former officials. In place of the Signals Intelligence and Information Assurance directorates, the organizations that historically have spied on foreign targets and defended classified networks against spying, the NSA is creating a Directorate of Operations that combines the operational elements of each.

January 28, 2016

Wired reports the Anaheim Police Department has acknowledged in new documents that it uses surveillance devices known as Dirtboxes—plane-mounted stingrays—on aircraft flying above the Southern California city that is home to Disneyland, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. According to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, the Anaheim Police Department have owned the Dirtbox since 2009 and a ground-based stingray since 2011, and may have loaned out the equipment to other cities across Orange County in the nearly seven years it has possessed the equipment

January 07, 2016

Politico reports a longstanding and unfulfilled congressional demand for memos about the use of GPS tracking devices in federal investigations triggered a tense exchange Thursday that saw key House lawmakers from both parties bearing down hard on a top Justice Department official. House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) slammed Justice Department legislative affairs chief Peter Kadzik, after he refused to commit to sharing the documents and directives on use of geolocation techniques. Kadzik insisted the memos had not been sent out "far and wide" and that the records amounted to attorney-work product that should be kept confidential.

The Washington Post reports the New York Police Department has agreed to settle a pair of federal lawsuits that claimed Muslims were the target of baseless surveillance and investigations because of their religion. As part of the agreement with civil rights groups that was disclosed Thursday in federal court in Manhattan, the NYPD said it would strengthen the oversight of terrorism investigations and ensure that it follows a series of guidelines to avoid religious profiling. The NYPD’s decision to settle the case is a victory for Muslims in the city who asserted that the department’s intelligence division had gone too far in its efforts to identify potential terrorists after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

December 10, 2015

The Washington Post reports in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris and California, there is growing sentiment among security hawks on Capitol Hill for legislation to ensure that law enforcement has access to encrypted communication. On Wednesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) became the latest senior lawmaker to call for such legislation. “If there is a conspiracy going on” among terrorist suspects using encrypted devices, “that encryption ought to be able to be pierced,” said Feinstein, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Her remarks came at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing at which FBI Director James B. Comey asserted that it would be “useful” for Congress to “drive this conversation.”

December 02, 2015

The Washington Post reports the Chinese government recently arrested a handful of hackers it says were connected to the breach of Office of Personnel Management’s database earlier this year, a mammoth break-in that exposed the records of more than 22 million current and former federal employees. The arrests took place shortly before a state visit in late September by President Xi Jinping, and U.S. officials say they appear to have been carried out in an effort to lessen tensions with Washington. The identities of the hackers — and whether they have any connection to the Chinese government — remain unclear. If the individuals detained were indeed the hackers, the arrests would mark the first measure of accountability for what has been characterized as one of the most devastating breaches of U.S. government data in history.

November 23, 2015

Wired reports news reports so what exactly are ISIS attackers doing for OPSEC? It turns out that a 34-page guide to operational security (.pdf) that ISIS members advise recruits to follow, offers some clues. The appearance of this and other OPSEC documents in ISIS forums and social media accounts indicate that the jihadis have not only studied these guides closely, but also keep pace with the news to understand the latest privacy and security vulnerabilities uncovered in apps and software that could change their status on the jihadi greatest-hits list.

November 18, 2015

The Washington Post reports in the summer, when even top law enforcement officials acknowledged that Congress was unlikely to force U.S. tech firms to make their phones and apps wiretappable, one senior intelligence official noted that the tide could turn “in the event of a terrorist attack.” The horrific Islamic State assault on Paris that claimed 129 lives may be that event, some federal and local officials say. It is not yet clear whether the plotters of the terrorist attacks that killed 129 civilians in the French capital used encrypted channels of communication. That hasn’t stopped some U.S. lawmakers and a number of state and local officials to call on Congress to act.

November 13, 2015

The Wall Street Journal reports governments around the globe are asking Facebook Inc. to ban more posts and to hand over more user data, according to the social network’s latest report on government requests. During the first six months of 2015, 92 countries asked the company to restrict 20,568 pieces of content on Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram that they believed violated their laws. That was more than double the 8,774 requests Facebook received during the first half of 2014 from 83 countries. Requests for user account data also rose 18% to 41,214 in the same time frame.

November 10, 2015

Wired reports a federal judge has ordered an immediate halt to the NSA’s controversial phone records collection program, ruling that the program violates the Constitution. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon’s decision to end the collection is a victory for the plaintiffs in the case and for civil liberties groups who have been asserting that the program was unconstitutional since it was first exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013. But while the ruling is important in principle for what it says about the legality of the program, its practical importance is minimal since the ruling only applies to the two plaintiffs who brought suit against the NSA—Larry Klayman, a conservative legal activist, and his business. Even that victory is minor since the NSA’s collection program is already set to end on November 29.

October 29, 2015

Wired reports on Thursday the EU parliament voted by a narrow margin of 285-281 to protect Snowden from extradition if he were to reside in Europe, a step toward allowing the NSA leaker to leave Moscow and safely live or travel on the continent. The motion, according to a statement from the parliament, will “drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties, in recognition of his status as whistle-blower and international human rights defender.” Snowden himself reacted with excitement to the news, calling it “extraordinary” and a “game-changer” on his Twitter feed—a strong sign that he may take the EU up on its offer.

October 09, 2015

Wired reports California continued its long-standing tradition for forward-thinking privacy laws today when Governor Jerry Brown signed a sweeping law protecting digital privacy rights. The landmark Electronic Communications Privacy Act bars any state law enforcement agency or other investigative entity from compelling a business to turn over any metadata or digital communications—including emails, texts, documents stored in the cloud—without a warrant. It also requires a warrant to track the location of electronic devices like mobile phones, or to search them. The legislation, which easily passed the Legislature last month, is the most comprehensive in the country, says the ACLU.

September 24, 2015

Politico reports the Justice Department is persisting in the implausible claim that there is no reliable proof that Verizon Wireless was part of the National Security Agency's program to sweep up data on U.S. telephone calls, notwithstanding a government document officially released last month that appears to confirm the cellphone carrier's involvement. In a filing Tuesday night with the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, government lawyers argue that because Verizon Wireless's name appears only in the caption of the newly released letter and not in its text, the government has not officially acknowledged Verizon Wireless' participation in the NSA program.

The Washington Post reports an Obama administration working group has explored four possible approaches tech companies might use that would allow law enforcement to unlock encrypted communications — access that some tech firms say their systems are not set up to provide. The group concluded that the solutions were “technically feasible,” but all had drawbacks as well. The approaches were analyzed as part of a months-long government discussion about how to deal with the growing use of encryption in which no one but the user can see the information. Law enforcement officials have argued that armed with a warrant they should be able to obtain communications, such as e-mails and text messages, from companies in terrorism and criminal cases.

September 10, 2015

The Washington Post reports if the government prevails in its legal battle to compel Microsoft to turn over e-mails held on a server in Ireland, an “international firestorm” could result, an attorney for the tech giant told a federal court in New York on Wednesday. In a case with significant global business and privacy implications, Joshua Rosenkranz, a Microsoft attorney, argued that U.S. law does allow the federal government to issue a warrant for e-mails the company is storing in a data center overseas. To uphold that warrant, he said, would launch “a global free-for-all” in which “any country with jurisdiction over a provider can reach into any other country and plunder our e-mails.”

September 09, 2015

The Washington Post reports a group of sophisticated Russian-speaking hackers is exploiting commercial satellites to siphon sensitive data from diplomatic and military agencies in the United States and in Europe as well as to mask their location, a security firm said in a new report. The group, which some researchers refer to as Turla, after the name of the malicious software it uses, also has targeted government organizations, embassies and companies in Russia, China and dozens of other countries, as well as research groups and pharmaceutical firms, said Stefan Tanase, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based cybersecurity firm with analysts around the world.

September 08, 2015

Wired reports the government’s use of controversial stingray devices just got a little more stringent and transparent—at least at the federal level. On Thursday the Justice Department announced a new and long-overdue policy requiring the FBI and other federal agents to obtain a search warrant before using stingrays—devices that simulate a cell phone tower in order to track the location of mobile phone users. The new policy forces prosecutors and investigators not only to obtain a warrant but also to disclose to judges that the specific technology they plan to use is a stingray, as opposed to another surveillance tool.

September 03, 2015

The Guardian reports Judges who issued the harshest rebuke to the National Security Agency have expressed skepticism at a civil libertarian attempt to stop the twilight phase of US bulk phone records surveillance, one of two challenges to the NSA in federal courtrooms. Alex Abdo of the American Civil Liberties Union argued on Wednesday before a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court in New York that the NSA should not be allowed to collect Americans’ phone data in bulk during a “transition” period seemingly allowed under a new law that bans the controversial surveillance.

August 31, 2015

Politico reports a federal appeals court on Friday reversed an injunction against the National Security Agency's domestic telephone surveillance program, while leaving open the question of whether the controversial practice is legal. The three appeals court judges assigned to the case splintered, with each writing a separate opinion. But they overturned a key ruling from December 2013 that critics of the NSA program had used to advance their claims that the collection of information on billions of calls made and received by Americans was illegal.

August 13, 2015

The New York Times reports the National Security Agency has used its bulk domestic phone records program to search for operatives from the government of Iran and “associated terrorist organizations” — not just Al Qaeda and its allies — according to a document obtained by The New York Times. The document also shows that a February 2010 order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for the program listed AT&T and Sprint as involved in it. A leaked 2013 court order for the program was addressed only to a Verizon subsidiary. The inclusion of Iran and allied terrorist groups — presumably the Shiite group Hezbollah — and the confirmation of the names of other participating companies add new details to public understanding of the once-secret program. The Bush administration created the program to try to find hidden terrorist cells on domestic soil after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and government officials have justified it by using Al Qaeda as an example.

August 06, 2015

The Washington Post reports a divided Fourth Circuit has ruled, in United States v. Graham, that “the government conducts a search under the Fourth Amendment when it obtains and inspects a cell phone user’s historical [cell-site location information] for an extended period of time” and that obtaining such records requires a warrant. The new case creates multiple circuit splits, which may lead to Supreme Court review. Specifically, the decision creates a clear circuit split with the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits on whether acquiring cell-site records is a search. It also creates an additional clear circuit split with the Eleventh Circuit on whether, if cell-site records are protected, a warrant is required. Finally, it also appears to deepen an existing split between the Fifth and Third Circuits on whether the Stored Communications Act allows the government to choose whether to obtain an intermediate court order or a warrant for cell-site records.

August 03, 2015

Al Jazeera reports Japan has described claims that the US spied on Japanese politicians and major firms as "deeply regrettable", in its first official response to revelations by the whistleblower group WikiLeaks. The latest WikiLeaks intercepts exposing US National Security Agency (NSA) activities follow other documents that revealed spying on allies including Germany and France, straining relations. "I will withhold comment. But If this is true, as an ally, it's deeply regrettable," Yoshihide Suga, the government's top spokesperson, said on Monday. He said Japan was checking with the US on the Wikileaks report issued on Friday. Japan is one of the key allies of the US in the Asia-Pacific region and the two countries regularly consult on defense, economic and trade issues.

July 28, 2015

The Intercept reports four months from now, at the same time that the National Security Agency finally abandons the massive domestic telephone dragnet exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, it will also stop perusing the vast archive of data collected by the program. The NSA announced on Monday that it will expunge all the telephone metadata it previously swept up, citing Section 215 of the U.S.A Patriot Act. The program was ruled illegal by a federal appeals court in May. In June, Congress voted to end the program, but gave the NSA until the end of November to phase it out.

July 24, 2015

The New York Times reports a law that gives French intelligence services sweeping new spying abilities has cleared a final hurdle after France’s Constitutional Council widely approved the legislation. In a ruling published late on Thursday evening, the council said it had struck down only a handful of unconstitutional provisions in the law, which gives French spying agencies the power to use phone taps, set up hidden cameras or microphones, and conduct bulk analysis of metadata, with almost no judicial oversight. The ruling paves the way for the rest of the law to officially come into effect after it was passed in Parliament last month. he Socialist government, which introduced and pushed for the legislation, has argued that it is necessary to overhaul a legal framework for intelligence operations that predates the widespread use of cellphones and the Internet, especially in the face of increased terrorist threats.

July 14, 2015

The New York Times reports the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to partially shut down the National Security Agency program that collects Americans’ phone records in bulk, which resumed last month after a lapse of several weeks. The move sets up a potential conflict between the regular court system and the nation’s secret spy court over whether the program is legal. In May, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the program was illegal. It said that the law the government says authorizes the program, Section 215 of the U.S.A. Patriot Act, could not be legitimately interpreted as permitting the systematic collection of Americans’ domestic phone records. But the court refrained from issuing an injunction because the law was about to expire. In late June, a judge on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court disagreed with the Second Circuit that the program was illegal and authorized the N.S.A. to resume collecting bulk phone records for the duration of the 180-day period. Now, the A.C.L.U. is asking the Second Circuit to block the program with the injunction it had previously refrained from issuing.

July 10, 2015

The Los Angeles Times reports the head of the U.S. personnel office, Katherine Archuleta, resigned Friday in the wake of a pair of massive data hacks said to affect 25 million people, far more than had been acknowledged before. Personal information, including the Social Security numbers of 21 million people, was stolen in the hacks into government personnel files that began last year, officials said Thursday. Another 4 million people also had information stolen in one of the breaches, which weren’t discovered until a few months ago. Archuleta said in a statement that she told President Obama that it was best for someone else to lead the Office of Personnel Management as it tries to recover from the intrusions and toughen the government’s digital security systems.

July 02, 2015

The Guardian reports the government’s electronic eavesdropping agency GCHQ spied illegally on Amnesty International, according to the tribunal responsible for handling complaints against the intelligence services. Confirmation that surveillance took place emerged late on Wednesday, when the human rights group revealed that the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) sent it an email correcting an earlier judgment. The extraordinary revision of a key detail in the ruling given on 22 June may alarm many supporters of Amnesty, who will want to know why it has been targeted. In the original judgment, the IPT said that communications by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and the South African non-profit Legal Resources Center had been illegally retained and examined.

The New York Times reports when a draft of China’s new national security law was made public in May, critics argued that it was too broad and left much open to interpretation. In the final form of the law, which the government said Wednesday had been enacted, Beijing got more specific, but in a way that is sending ripples through the global technology industry. New language in the rules calls for a “national security review” of the technology industry — including network and other products and services — and foreign investment. The law also calls for technology that supports key sectors to be “secure and controllable,” a catchphrase that multinationals and industry groups say could be used to force companies to build so-called back doors — which allow third-party access to systems — provide encryption keys or even hand over source code.

July 01, 2015

Reuters reports Germany on Wednesday named a former senior judge as special investigator to inspect a list of targets that German intelligence tracked on behalf of the NSA, causing a political uproar. Critics have accused Chancellor Angela Merkel's staff of giving the German BND foreign intelligence agency the green light to help the NSA spy on European firms and officials, triggering a scandal that has dented Merkel's popularity. Espionage is an especially sensitive issue in Germany because of abuses in the Nazi and Communist eras. Revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about wide-ranging U.S. spying in close ally Germany caused outrage, which was compounded by allegations that the BND was complicit. Merkel's coalition agreed on Kurt Graulich, a former judge at the Federal Administrative Court, to be the special investigator, according to the head of the parliamentary committee investigating NSA practices, Christian Flisek.

The Washington Post reports the National Security Agency on Tuesday restarted its bulk collection of Americans’ phone records for a temporary period, following a federal court ruling this week that gave it the green light, U.S. officials said. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Monday ruled that the NSA could resume gathering millions of Americans’ phone metadata — call times, dates and durations — to scan for links to foreign terrorists. But the resumption is good for only 180 days — or until Nov. 29, in compliance with the USA Freedom Act. That law, which President Obama signed June 2 after a contentious congressional debate, will end the government’s bulk collection of metadata. It provided, however, for a transition period to allow the NSA time to set up an alternative system in which the data is stored by the phone companies.

June 24, 2015

The Associated Press reports embarrassed by leaked conversations of three successive French presidents and angered by new evidence of uninhibited American spying, France demanded answers Wednesday from the Obama administration and called for an intelligence "code of conduct" between allies. France's foreign minister summoned the U.S. ambassador to respond to the WikiLeaks revelations, as French eyes fixed on the top floor of the U.S. Embassy after reports that a nest of NSA surveillance equipment was concealed behind elaborately painted windows there, just down the block from the presidential Elysee Palace. President Barack Obama told French President Francois Hollande in a phone conversation Wednesday that the U.S. wasn't targeting his communications.

June 11, 2015

The New York Times reports investigators say that the Chinese hackers who attacked the databases of the Office of Personnel Management may have obtained the names of Chinese relatives, friends and frequent associates of American diplomats and other government officials, information that Beijing could use for blackmail or retaliation. Federal employees who handle national security information are required to list some or all of their foreign contacts, depending on the agency, to receive high-level clearances. Investigators say that the hackers obtained many of the lists, and they are trying to determine how many of those thousands of names were compromised. In classified briefings to members of Congress in recent days, intelligence officials have described what appears to be a systematic Chinese effort to build databases that explain the inner workings of the United States government.

BBC News reports Israel has denied it bugged talks on Iran's nuclear program, after a security company said a computer virus hacked the venues of the negotiations. The Russian firm Kaspersky Lab said the hacking at three European hotels was so sophisticated, it must have been created by a government. World powers and Iran have been holding talks on the fate of Iran's nuclear program ahead of a 30 June deadline. Switzerland and Austria have both opened investigations into the hacks. The US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China are seeking a final agreement to curtail Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. They fear Iran wants to build a nuclear bomb - something Iran strongly denies.

June 10, 2015

Reuters reports a computer virus was used to hack into venues linked to international talks on Iran's nuclear program, Russian computer security company Kaspersky Lab said on Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal said the virus was widely believed to be used by Israeli spies and Kaspersky had linked it to "three luxury European hotels" used in the negotiations involving Iran and six world powers. Kaspersky said it looked into the "cyber-intrusion" after detecting the "Duqu 2.0" malware in its own systems in early spring this year, which it said was designed to spy on its technology, research, and internal processes. Other victims of Duqu had been found in Western countries, the Middle East and Asia, it said in an emailed statement. "Most notably, some of the new 2014-2015 infections are linked to the P5+1 events and venues related to the negotiations with Iran about a nuclear deal," the statement said.

June 08, 2015

The Washington Post reports China is building massive databases of Americans’ personal information by hacking government agencies and U.S. health-care companies, using a high-tech tactic to achieve an age-old goal of espionage: recruiting spies or gaining more information on an adversary, U.S. officials and analysts say. Groups of hackers working for the Chinese government have compromised the networks of the Office of Personnel Management, which holds data on millions of current and former federal employees, as well as the health insurance giant Anthem, among other targets, the officials and researchers said. “They’re definitely going after quite a bit of personnel information,” said Rich Barger, chief intelligence officer of ThreatConnect, a Northern Virginia cybersecurity firm. “We suspect they’re using it to understand more about who to target [for espionage], whether electronically or via human ­recruitment.”